Kindling
by waterbaby134
Summary: Dawson arrives at 51 in search of new challenges and new experiences, and gets more than she expected in Matt Casey. Pre-series one-shot, as close to canon as possible.


**My first Chicago Fire fic. I really enjoy the show and wanted to try my hand at writing in a new fandom. Please forgive me if any particulars aren't exactly right, I wrote the details mostly on memory.**

**Rated T for safety.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing.**

**We all know that Dawson was well and truly hung up on Casey when the series started. So here is my little pre-series oneshot on how that might have happened.**

* * *

She was called into the Chief's office at the end of shift one sticky day in June. All she wanted was a long, cool shower and a colder beer. She'd been doing inventory in the ambulance for the past three hours, her partner, Westren, having disappeared again to flirt with the new candidate. Why not, when she had seniority and someone to palm it off to? In the midst of counting vial upon vial of drugs in the rig, Dawson swore to herself that if she ever became a paramedic in charge, she'd never treat her partner that way. But that was a long way off.

The chief waved a sheet of paper in her face, swatting a passing fly in the process.

"Transfer's been approved, Dawson," he said. "As of next shift, report to Firehouse 51. Ask for Chief Boden."

His eyes asked the question that he did not. _Why_ had she asked to be moved in the first place? What was it about his house that didn't meet the exacting standards of Gabriella Dawson? It was a common trait in fire chiefs, she'd noticed, to defend their house as though it were their actual home.

She didn't bother indulging his curiosity, simply thanked him and left. There was nothing wrong with Firehouse 34 after all; she'd been here since she was a candidate. But that was three years ago, and she wasn't the fresh-out-of-the-academy paramedic she'd been back then. She'd been riding around the Chicago streets for long enough to be ready for something tougher.

51 was a busy house. She'd seen the engines from 51 race by many times on her days off shift, sirens blazing, in a screaming hurry, the ambo in hot pursuit. They were always on the move, and she wanted to be a part of that. It wouldn't be easy, switching houses, integrating herself into a new team, a task made even harder being a woman, but it would be worth it. She was ready to be tested, and eager to be challenged.

She took savage pleasure in announcing her departure to Westren, her parting gift to her the completed inventory form, shredded beyond all hope of salvage, and thrown at her feet. Let her do her own goddamn grunt work from now on. It was about time.

She left 34 for the last time with a smile on her lips, and Westren's shrieks of fury ringing in her ears.

Firehouse 51 didn't seem all that remarkable; the first time she saw it. Of course, by definition a firehouse was always impressive, but generally, it seemed to fit the mould. Two doors thrown open wide, to provide a clear path for the trucks, should they be needed, wide windows, high ceilings. She walked inside to find a guy standing next to one of the vehicles, shrugging out of his jacket. He must have just returned from a call.

He either didn't hear her, or pretended not to as she approached, and it wasn't until there was less than a foot between them that he deigned to turn his head.

She sucked in a breath. No doubt about it, the guy was hot, no pun intended. A grin started to creep across his face, as he looked her over, the same way Antonio used to look at a particularly juicy hamburger, back when they were kids. He even had the same glint in his eyes.

"I heard we were getting some new blood today," he said, reaching out to shake her hand, his eyes never leaving hers. "The name's Severide."

"Hey Severide," she said flatly. "Two things. One, you've got a snowball's hope in hell, so don't even try. And two, where can I find Boden?" He seemed surprised at her cool tone; clearly this was a man who used to having women fall at his feet. Smooth, suave, confident to the point of arrogance. So not her type.

"Come with me," he said, beaming at her once again, and motioning for her to follow him. He recovered from disappointment fast; she'd give him that.

"So are you going to tell me your name, or am I going to have to take you out to dinner and guess?"

She fixed him with the icy glare usually reserved for Antonio. "That's two strikes. Three strikes and you're out, cowboy. It's Gabriella Dawson. But let's just stick with Dawson."

He lead the way through the corridors of the house and she followed at a short distance, taking in her new surroundings, occasionally meeting the eyes of curious firefighters who stuck their heads around corners and through doors to check out the new arrival.

"Hermann, Cruz, Otis, Mouch, Cap," Severide carelessly rattled off their names as they passed them, inclining his head to the last, but mostly ignoring the former four, all of whom cast him looks of deep dislike, before disappearing again.

"Mouch?" she asked, incredulously.

"Half man, half couch," he said, simply, and offered no further explanation. They took a left turn, arriving in a corridor lined with offices. The Chief's office was at the far end, but her escort stopped a few doors down.

"I stop here," he said, opening the door. "I'm sure you can get the rest of the way on your own." He grinned at her once more. "But if you change your mind about that dinner you know where I'll be."

Her angry response was cut off when the door was closed firmly in her face.

She knocked on Boden's door and was invited in. The man behind the desk smiled widely in welcome, and she couldn't help smiling right back, as they introduced themselves, and shook hands.

"I just got off the phone with your former chief," he informed her. "He says I ought to watch out for you Dawson. Apparently you and the union don't always see eye to eye."

"I do what I think is right," she said. "Sometimes The Man disagrees with me."

He chuckled, removing a set of glasses from his nose. "Indeed. Though personally I just think he's still sore about losing you. Jansen always did take it personally when his crew decided to move on." He got to his feet. "I think you're going to fit right in here."

There was a knock on the door just then, and another man walked into the room. This one was good-looking too, she noticed, with piercing blue eyes, chiselled features, and close-cropped blonde hair.

"Sorry Chief," he said as he closed the door behind him, "I don't want to interrupt, this will only take a second."

"That's all right Lieutenant, we were just about done here anyway," said the Chief, easily. "Meet our new paramedic, Gabriella Dawson. Dawson, Matt Casey."

Matt Casey smiled warmly at her as he shook her hand too. His smile seemed to light up his entire being, as though nothing could have made him happier at that moment than to meet her, and to her embarrassment, she felt her heart skip a beat.

"_Get a grip, Dawson,"_ she scolded herself. _"That's a complication you don't need."_

"I have no doubt you'll be right at home here in no time," said Boden. "But if you should need anything while you get settled here I'm sure Casey here, and Lieutenant Severide will be more than happy to help."

"_Lieutenant_ Severide?" she found herself blurting out, in mingled surprise and horror. If she'd known she'd been addressing a superior, she might have shut him down a touch less bluntly.

Casey laughed a little at the expression on her face. "He hit on you didn't he?" he asked her, ignoring Boden's disapproving look. "Don't worry, he'll lose interest in a day or two, he's more the instant gratification kind. Women of any real substance aren't his thing."

The chief interrupted at that point, asking Casey what it was he'd come to see him about, and Dawson understood herself to be dismissed.

* * *

The next time she saw him was in the kitchen, bending over a hot stove, cursing in Spanish. In the absence of any candidates, and being the newest addition to the house, cooking duties for the evening had fallen to her. Luckily, she'd been prepared for it, and had come armed with one of her Abuela's signature dishes, which was bound to be a hit if she could just get the seasoning right.

She was sprinkling paprika into the pot when he appeared next to her, leaning against the countertop with a cup of coffee in his hand.

"That looks amazing," he said, peering into the pot.

"It's not yet." She put in a spoon and tasted it. "But it will be."

He smiled. "Don't forget, you're cooking for people who live on fried chicken and pizza. We don't exactly have the highest of standards."

"Abuela will never forgive me if I get this wrong," she said. "I'm not nearly as concerned about what you all think. If you want to eat, you'll eat what I put down in front of you."

Too late, she realized she'd fallen into her usual trap of not thinking before she spoke, or as Antonio had once put it, "letting her big mouth run away with her." She glanced nervously at Casey, expecting him to look offended, but found him grinning at her instead, and her heart did that stupid, skippy thing again.

"I was going to tell the boys to be polite and not offend you on your first day, but now I think that they're not the ones I should be saying it to," he said.

She shrugged. "Let them say what they want. I can take it."

"So I'm discovering."

He stayed at her elbow as she finished off the meal, content to simply watch her work, and not fill the silence with meaningless chatter. This was a man who only spoke when he felt he had something to say worth hearing. She liked that.

As predicted, Abuela's recipe went down a storm when she finally got it on to the table. Even Otis and Mouch, who had initially baulked at the lack of fried or processed fare, had cleared their plates, and she had the satisfaction of several of the men, including Casey, asking for more. The very last serving, she kept for herself, tasting it critically. Not quite as good as Abuela's of course, but pretty damn close.

"It's good to finally have someone in this house that can cook a decent meal," said Hermann, to nods, and murmurs of agreement. "Dawson, you're all right."

Across the table, Casey caught her eye and flashed her the thumbs up.

Her heart flipped over in her chest.

* * *

"Dawson! Watch your back!"

Casey's voice was just audible over the chaos, incorporating the screaming sirens, the searing heat, and the suffocating smoke. They'd been called to a house fire downtown to discover one victim inside. Male, mid-fifties, and unresponsive to the firefighter's calls, she'd deduced that he'd been unconscious for at least a few minutes before they'd arrived. He'd be fine once they got him to Lakeshore, but getting him out of the house was a different story.

Truck had been forced to break down the front door to get into the house, but the vibrations of the axe had caused part of the roof towards the back of the house to collapse. Hermann, Cruz and Casey had all surged forward to tackle the blaze, essentially trapping Dawson and her patient between them and the way out. With Squad overseeing the venting of the roof, it was all she could do to stay still and wait for the right moment to move, but they were running out of time, he was fading fast. She hoped Tredner, her partner, had the sense to have the rig already started when she finally did get out there, but there was no guarantee on that. The woman had a particularly severe case of baby brain these days. Thank God she'd be on maternity leave next week. Hopefully her replacement would turn out to be a bit more useful.

With a deep creaking and groaning sound, a section of the house just to left of her gave way. Instinctively she felt her arms fly up to cover her face, but the impact she was waiting for never came. She could just make out a silhouette through the blinding smoke, and read the name on the jacket by the flickering flames. Casey had leapt to her side at the last moment to shield her from the worst of the falling debris, and now somehow, miraculously, the path to the door had become clear.

Between the two of them, they managed to get the gurney outside, but before she'd been able to do more than open her mouth to thank him for what he'd done for her, he stormed back into the building to rejoin his men in the fight.

She and Tredner deposited their patient at the Lakeshore ER and arrived back to 51 in time to see the two engines trundling back through the doors. The men got out, sighing, shaking their heads, but all seemed unhurt, until Casey, the last to step out, sporting a long gash on his arm.

No sooner had Tredner parked the ambulance, than she leapt down from it and hurried over to him, wanting to inspect the damage for herself. Mercifully, it seemed to be the only injury he'd sustained, but the mere thought that this had happened just on her account made her want to be sick.

"I'm fine," he said, waving her away. "It's just a scratch."

"Don't be an idiot," she snapped, seizing his arm and dragging it towards her for a closer look. "It needs bandaging at least."

He sighed, exasperated. "Fine, give me one from the ambo," he said, irritably. "I'll take care of it."

"The hell you will. Sit down."

"I'm telling you, it's nothing," he protested.

"Let the woman do her job, Lieutenant," Hermann chipped in, appearing from around the other side of the vehicle. "This is what the great city of Chicago pays her for."

With Hermann's support, she finally managed to get him into a chair, and to clean and dress his wound, ignoring his fidgeting and constant refrains that he was fine and she was wasting her time. Though intent on her task, she couldn't help but notice his lean, muscular arms as she wound a bandage around it, and tried her utmost not to blush.

"Thank you," she said. "For having my back in there."

He seemed genuinely surprised by her gratitude. "I would've done it for anyone," he said. And she believed him. She really believed he would have still thrown himself into such peril had she been his closest friend of many years, or a complete stranger he'd never met before. He had more of a reverence for human life than anybody she'd ever known, though ironically that reverence didn't seem to include his own safety. Utter selflessness was a dying trait in the modern world, but she had found it in Matt Casey.

There was no way of ignoring the stuttering of her pulse as he thanked her for patching him up, nor did she think she should even bother trying. She was in too deep now. Somewhere she'd never thought she would ever be. And there would be no stopping it.

* * *

"Have you always been this pathetic or this a recent development?" Leslie Shay crushed her empty drink cup into a pulp and tossed it out the window of the rig into a trashcan. They'd made a stop for lunch after dropping their latest patient, a stabbing victim, at Lakeshore, and once again, conversation had turned to the ongoing saga of Dawson's gut wrenching yearning for Casey.

"I have no idea. Maybe I always was, and just didn't know it." Dawson ate a fry, morosely, with a sidelong look at her best friend. She and Shay had taken to each other right away, the day she'd been hired as Tredner's replacement on 61, and it hadn't taken long for the whole sorry story to come out. She'd never met someone like Shay before, someone upfront and direct, who wasn't afraid to say exactly what she was thinking. Perhaps that was why she and Severide got along so well.

"I've told you a million times," said Shay firmly. "Corner him in the locker room at the end of shift, kiss him senseless, and then casually ask him if he maybe wants to get drink sometime."

"In that order?"

"It's what I'd do." Shay unwrapped her takeaway sandwich and took a large bite. "At least then if he says no to the drink, you still get to find out whether he's a good kisser or not."

"Is it always about sex with you Shay?" she asked, with a laugh.

"You'll be thanking me when he's in your bed, screaming your name."

Dawson averted her eyes from her best friend at that point and tried to think of something else. Not that the thought of Casey in bed with her was in any way unpleasant, but it wasn't something she liked to be thinking about in front of audience. Not even Shay, who knew all about it anyway.

Shay stopped chewing and pulled a face at her sandwich. "Damn it, why do they always put pickle on these?" she grumbled. "Look Dawson, the way I see it, you've got two options here. Either get up the guts and go and ask him out, or be alone and miserable. But either way, I'm tired of hearing about it."

And soon the half-eaten sandwich too, was sailing through the air, on course for the trashcan.

* * *

The siren sounded for the end of shift, and the firehouse echoed with the sounds of weary people making their exit. Normally around this time of day she'd be thinking of nothing but crawling into bed and sleeping for hours on end, but today she was too edgy to even think of sleeping.

She'd been tossing it up in her mind for a week, finally coming to the conclusion that Shay had been right. She'd been a coward in regards to the situation with Casey. She was just going to go up to him and ask him to join her for a drink, just like Shay had said. A nice, friendly drink between colleagues; that wouldn't be so hard.

And if, with alcohol in their systems, the outing happened to become f_riendlier_, and less colleague-like, then so much the better. She'd taken control in her professional life, now paramedic-in-charge after Tredner's departure, it was about time her personal life followed suit.

She spotted him a little ahead of her, chatting to his friend Andy Darden, his blonde hair even blonder in the afternoon sun. This was it. Now or never.

Her heart sank as a woman emerged from parked car, and opened her arms to him, her dark hair fluttering in the breeze. She looked vaguely familiar, but Dawson couldn't place her, as Casey happily accepted her embrace and their lips met.

When the couple broke apart, and the woman turned her head, suddenly she recognised her. Hallie-something, one of the doctors from Lakeshore she and Shay handed off patients to.

So that answered that question, as they walked towards the car, hand in hand. She should have guessed that he'd be taken.

The good ones always were.

* * *

**I really hope you enjoyed this, and I that I did justice to this great show.**


End file.
